


The More I See You:  Part 1

by orphan_account



Series: The More I See You [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, Dating, F/F, carnivals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 17:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3737269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy and Angie finally get around to doing some proper dating.  Angie picks the first date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More I See You:  Part 1

The lights twinkled on the boardwalk and the air was filled with the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy, the shouting of the barkers running the amusement, and a little further back, beneath it all, the soft sounds of the water lapping against the sand. A swing band composed of local Brooklyn boys was up in the bandshell halfway down the boardwalk, blaring out some pretty hot jazz that drifted down to them on the breezes. The night was mild and warm, full of stars…. a perfect night to be near the ocean and take advantage of everything the boardwalk had to offer. Angie hooked her arm in Peggy’s, pointing to the entrance to the boardwalk, lit up with big white bulbs and painted in bright colors. “Now this,” she said, with some pride, “is the real New York.”

Peggy smiled indulgently. She’d been all over the city of course, and gotten to know quite a bit of it. And Angie knew perfectly well that she was far from the proper English girl she’d made herself out to be when they met. But this was Angie’s corner of the city, and Peggy could see that she was excited to share it with her; her turf, her terms.

“So, you’re not afraid of heights, right?” Angie asked as they strolled along through the milling crowds. 

Peggy gave her a sidelong glance. “Do you know how many airplanes I’ve jumped out of?”

Angie chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, the great Agent Carter.” She pointed up at the enormous Ferris Wheel. “No parachutes on that thing, though.”

Peggy smiled. “Well, I hope you weren’t planning on jumping out of it, then. So what’s first?”

They’d already eaten dinner at an Italian place in Bensonhurst that served the real authentic stuff, and Peggy was still getting her brain around the notion that Italian Americans called tomato sauce “gravy.” But Angie pointed to the cotton candy stand and said, “I think that’s our first stop.”

They bought one big stick with a giant, wispy wad of blue cotton candy wrapped around it, easily bigger than either of their heads. Angie enjoyed a little too much watching Peggy try to navigate it without getting bits of it stuck on her lipstick. “Lemme show you how you do it,” she announced. She plucked a hank of it off with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. And indeed, she did not get any stuck to her lipstick.

“But your fingers,” Peggy protested.

“Uh-huh?” Angie replied innocently, taking just a half a moment too long to lick the sugary residue from her fingers. She was enjoying the slightly helpless look on Peggy’s face.

“Um…” Peggy was having a rare moment in which no witty retort was at the ready.

Angie took a few more bits of cotton candy and ate them in the same way. Peggy looked like she was likely to jump on her right then and there if they didn’t move along. 

“Ferris Wheel, then?” she asked, smirking.

Angie’s eyes twinkled. “Too much for ya, English?”

“Just enough, I’d say,” Peggy snorted. They strolled over to the line for the Ferris Wheel, working through the rest of the cotton candy while they waited, Peggy trying not to let her eyes linger too much on Angie’s lips licking the sweet, sticky stuff from her fingers. 

Somehow, by the time they’d gotten up to the front of the line, Angie had managed to wipe her fingers clean enough to pull a couple of singles from somewhere and hand them to the operator of the ride along with their tickets. “My cousin’s visiting from England, I wanna make sure she gets to see the view for a couple of minutes, ok?”

The operator took her money and grunted in assent, helping them into the car and pulling down the metal bar to fasten them in. They sat, shoulders touching, the car slowly inching upwards as the operator loaded pair after pair in until the whole thing was full. The band on the boardwalk was playing “A Tisket A Tasket” and as their car climbed upwards, and they could see a throng of couples dancing. 

“Wish me and you could go dance like that,” Angie commented wistfully, taking note of them.

“Well, we could,” Peggy replied, nonchalant, “I’d just probably wind up having to break a few people’s jaws and it wouldn’t really be the most romantic end to our evening.”

“I dunno,” Angie chuckled, “the idea of you beating up a bunch of fellas defending my honor…?”

Their fingers tangled together as they grinned at each other, their car making a few circuits up and down and their stomachs floating a split second behind it, full of that lovely, light feeling. They didn’t talk much, enjoying the ride, the evening air, and the feeling of each other’s hands. On the third circuit round, their car stopped at the top, rocking gently. Angie’s eyes twinkled. “How do you like the view?”

Peggy looked dead at her, not even pausing to take in the waterline, the twinkling lights of boats further out on the ocean, the glow of the lights on the boardwalk, the amusements, the glittering mirrors of the carousel. “It’s perfect.”

“I slipped the guy a coupla fins to give us a few minutes up here,” Angie said proudly.

“Oh, so you think I’m that kind of girl, do you?”

Angie gave her a “honey, please” look. “I know you are.”

Peggy shrugged an acknowledgement. “Quite so.” She took Angie’s hand and brought it to her lips, brushing her tongue over her fingertips and watching Angie’s eyes close in response. “Still taste the sugar on them,” she observed softly.

“That’s my natural sweetness,” Angie sighed. She pulled her fingers away, and leaned in to kiss Peggy, a little thrill racing down her back at doing this out in public. Even though they were at the top of the ferris wheel and she knew nobody could see them, it felt like getting away with something huge. Sinking into Peggy’s lush, red lips, in the gently swaying Ferris Wheel car, with the sounds of the boardwalk mingling with the whisper of the ocean and the night breezes, instead of hiding in their house…. it felt like robbing a bank.

The kiss was careful because they didn’t want to smear their lipstick too much, but it was delicious; if not for the taste of cotton candy still lingering on both their tongues, then surely for that added frisson of doing something so illicit.

The car lurched forward, and they reluctantly pulled apart.

“I’ll bet you think you’re quite smooth, Martinelli,” Peggy whispered, looking at Angie with a mixture of affection, teasing and lust. 

“Worked on you, didn’t it?”

Peggy couldn’t really argue the point.

 

**

 

The boardwalk held a number of amusements and so-called games of skill, as well ones of luck and strength. “Can we go play some games?” Peggy suggested.

Angie shrugged. “If you want. They’re rigged though, you know that, right?”

Peggy’s eyes took on a determined gleam. “You say that as though it’s ever stopped me.”

They strolled arm in arm, not standing out from any other pair of dolled-up gal pals cruising the boardwalk on a Saturday night, except they weren’t looking for a pair of fellas to dance with. Peggy was eyeing up the games as they took a leisurely pace.

The game where you swing the hammer to send the weight up the pole and try to ring the bell. The one where you try to toss the golf ball into the fishbowls. But the prizes weren’t worth it. The “guess your weight” booth where some old creep in a top hat with a greasy mustache ogles you up and tries to guess your weight. Ugh, no thank you. 

Then Peggy spied it. The target shooting booth. You were meant to shoot the star out of a paper target with a little cap rifle. “Oh, let’s do that one!” she exclaimed.

Angie shrugged. “Whatever you want, honey. But I told you, they’re all rigged.”

“Hm, yes you did,” Peggy agreed. She sauntered up to the booth and addressed the barker. “Right, how much for a go?”

“Twenty-five cents. You shoot half the target out, you can pick from the bottom two shelves. Shoot out the whole thing, dollface, and you can pick from the top row.” He gestured to the shelves full of prizes behind him. 

The bottom two rows were cheap knicknacks that she couldn’t imagine having any use for. She turned to Angie. “Darling, what would you like?”

Angie, still incredulous that Peggy was even going to try, answered sarcastically, “Oh, well you know, I’d love that big teddy bear up on the top.”

The barker chuckled. “Your friend has some big ambitions for you, there, sweetheart.”

Peggy smiled sweetly. She handed him the twenty-five cents and took the little capgun rifle from him. She leveled it at the paper target, looking down the barrel for a moment. Angie wasn’t wrong. It was fixed alright. The sight on this thing wasn’t zeroed properly. She rested it on the counter top, delicately gripping the end of the barrel.

“Now, careful there, sweetie,” the barker said nervously, “I don’t want you gettin’ hurt with that thing-”

“Well it’s more likely someone’s going to get hurt if I’m firing a gun that’s got incorrect sights, isn’t it?” she replied, smiling brightly as she adjusted the little gun. She held it up again, and pointed it at the target, looking down the barrel. Much better. “I mean, I could be aiming at the target and accidentally hit you, couldn’t I?”

The guy had turned white by now, and Peggy still smiled, calm and pleasant. She aimed at the target and the little gun went “POP POP POP POP” in her hands as she blew the star out of the center of the target with two shots left to spare. Angie was covering her mouth to try to contain her shrieks, and the other shooters at the amusement had stopped, watching Peggy’s ruthless efficiency with admiration and envy.

Peggy turned to Angie and asked briskly, “It was the big bear, wasn’t it, Angie?” Angie nodded, her eyes wide, trying not to laugh out loud. Peggy turned back to the barker. “Right, then. The big bear, if you would?”

He hesitated. He would probably get in trouble for actually losing one of the big prizes. Peggy decided it wasn’t her problem. 

“Come on, then. We’ve got other amusements to visit.” She waved her hand a little imperiously, Angie snickering beside her, and the fellow climbed up onto a step stool and retrieved it, handing it to them over the counter. 

Angie could only hold the furry behemoth with both arms wrapped around its enormous middle, her eyes peering at Peggy from between it’s fuzzy ears.

“Well, there’s our solution, darling,” Peggy decided. “The bear can be your dance partner.”

Angie glared playfully over the top of the bear’s head. “Shut up, English.”

 

**

 

They kicked off their shoes and walked down onto the sand of the beach. Having found a way to carry the bear between them, they wandered a little way from the hubbub and closer to the waterline. A few couples were tucked away in the shadows beneath the boardwalk, canoodling the way Angie and Peggy would have liked to be doing at that particular moment. 

“Doesn’t it ever bug you, Peg? I mean, that we can’t just have it like they have it?” Angie asked her after a long quiet.

Peggy smiled ruefully. Angie looked particularly pretty tonight, her sandy curls falling loose around her face the way Peggy liked them. She said the only truth there was: “If it means I get to have you, I don’t care how I have to do it.”

Even in the dim light, she could see a little color rise in Angie’s cheeks when she said that. 

“Honey…”

Peggy knew that slightly desperate tone in her sweetheart’s voice. “Would you like to get out of here?”

“Yeah, let’s go. That dress looks great on you, but I think it’d look better on the bedroom floor.”

 

**

They passed out the main gate, the bear still carried between them and their shoes somehow managing to be full of sand despite their having carried them across the beach. The block near the subway entrance was a little dark for Peggy’s liking and Angie noticed Peggy’s eyes scanning the street.

“Peg, relax. This neighborhood’s totally safe,” Angie assured her as they walked toward the elevated trains through the circles of lamp light, their heels clicking against the pavement.

Peggy frowned. “I know,” she replied, with a tone that said she didn’t think it was necessarily so at the moment.

Angie started to chatter the way she did when she was in a good mood, talking about how this was actually not too far from the newsstand her cousin tried to knock over when he got shot, but how it was generally pretty safe around here thanks to the fact that there were a lot of mafiosi around. She elaborated on a neighbor of her parents’ named Jimmy Gravano who she was pretty sure was a mobster because what kind of vitamin salesman dresses in those sharp suits with the wingtips, y’know, but how he was the nicest guy and would stop by on Christmas, real neighborly, with a nice pannetone or a bottle of Sambuca, and-

Angie had gotten about five steps before realizing that Peggy wasn’t holding the other side of the bear anymore. Peggy was five paces behind, punching a couple of mustachioed goons in the face. 

“You cheated our game!” one of them growled, collecting himself and getting up from the pavement.

“Your game is a cheat,” she answered coolly. “Honestly, what kind of men come after a couple of women to threaten their lives over a stuffed bear?”

He glanced at his companion, whom Peggy had knocked cold on the sidewalk. He wasn’t moving. “It’s a big bear,” he replied, wiping some blood from his mouth.

“You’re not getting it back.” 

He pulled a small switchblade knife out of his pocket and popped it open. The blade gleamed under the pale yellow light of the street lamps.

Peggy tsked. “Really. What would your mother say?”

Angie rushed forward, carrying the bear with both arms again. “Peg!” she yelled, charging at the guy, who ended up burying his knife into the bear’s fuzzy gut. 

Tired of playing around, Peggy punched him again over the top of the bear’s head and watched as this time, he collapsed and didn’t get back up.

“You got some right hook, honey,” Angie panted, still in shock.

“That was really stupid, what you just did,” Peggy scolded her. “You could have been hurt. And now we’re going to have to sew him up,” she added, gesturing at the heap of man and stuffed animal on the sidewalk. 

“You didn’t hurt him that bad.”

Peggy sighed. “The bear.”

“Oh. Right.”

Peggy bent down and hauled the bear up off of the goon. She inspected the hole where the knife had gone into it. Wasn’t so bad, actually. She looked back at Angie, who was clearly keyed up, a little scared, and more than a little excited at having seen Peggy in action. “But… it was very brave.” She gave Angie a furtive little peck on the lips.

Angie grinned. “Let’s get home, before we find out what that dress of yours looks like on the sidewalk.”


End file.
